Elizabeth Holmes' Prison Sentence Was Quietly Reduced by Two Years | Hacker News Reader

Elizabeth Holmes' Prison Sentence Was Quietly Reduced by Two Years

gizmodo.com

The article says that federal prisoners' "good time" sentence reductions are automatically provided up front but you can lose good time and thus extend your sentence. That's smart thinking, to take advantage of loss aversion, a now-well-documented psychological phenomenon in behavioral economics [0].

(I do the same in my law-school classes: Students automatically get an up-front "signing bonus" for attendance in points on their final-grade total, but they can lose points by exceeding stated absence thresholds [1]. It works quite well for that purpose.)

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/loss-psychology.asp

[1] https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Syllabus.html#orgdc01c7d

It doesn't really work that well. 15% just isn't enough of a motivator when considering the other factors at play on the inside (except for people who aren't totally broken that have kids they want to get back to or family members that might die within that window).

> It doesn't really work that well. 15% just isn't enough of a motivator when considering the other factors at play on the inside

I'm curious about the basis for your opinion; do you have first-hand personal experience?

Yes. Years and years and years of it.

If we're asking whether the policy works or not, we need to look at all inmates, not personal experience. What percentage of inmates receive early release? Does that percentage change when it's not given up front, but accrued over time? What percentage of prisoners who receive early release say they would have behaved worse if not for the policy? Is behavior worse when there is no conditional early release policy?

If you take away a decade of my life and I know when I release I have no job, I've lost lots of family, I'm willing to trade 1.5 years more time in order to be comfortable/live in the best possible way for the 10 versus get out in 8.5, especially if I am used to getting high and want to keep doing it. The numbers are both too big and too small to make it matter to someone whose calculus got them a 10 year sentence. I tried talking sense into so many youngsters but their lives are gone in their minds. They are going to spend their 20s and parts of their 30s behind bars. They don't care. Their only calculation is to keep their security points down so they don't end up at at a really really hard yard. That was the only thing the youngsters worried about when it came to getting in trouble. And that was mainly because they were afraid of gang rape (I don't know if that's a thing or not, it wasn't at our spot but there was a hyper fear of it going to another spot) beaten and stabbed, or if they had come down in levels zero desire to go back up.

Nothing was reduced here. The BOP lists your estimated release date which includes good time that you have not lost.

You serve 85 percent of your sentence in the Feds if you don't lose goodtime. The numbers listed work out to 85% (there is a little bit of wonk in how they BOP calculates this number. It recently got changed as the BOP used math that reduced good time calculations and had to be told how to do math in the First Step act).

https://famm.org/wp-content/uploads/faq-federal-good-time-cr...

There have also been reductions via the First Step act but I don't know how that ended up. You got reductions for working at the Federal slave labor sweatshop (UNICOR) and for 'Programming' (taking their classes) but the BOP was fighting these pretty hard back when I was paying attention to these things a few years ago.

yeah, it is actually a poor deal compared to state crimes, which can have parole.

This would have been a much better response by the Bureau of Prisons than "for privacy, safety and security reasons, our office does not comment on the conditions of confinement for any inmate, including release planning or release plans" [1].

[1] https://nypost.com/2023/07/10/elizabeth-holmes-gets-prison-t...

There's nuance to a different answer and the BOP isn't about nuance. They are about enforcing very rigid fixed rules. I am sure that they have no flexibility in their response ('When asked about release dates, respond with this').

Edit: The saddest thing about this is major reporting outlets have no idea how our prison system works. But I get it. I didn't either until I fell out of the world.

Makes you wonder how bad Gizmodo “journalists” are. Are they really just dumb or malicious?

Probably dumb.

> Holmes, who once boasted of having $4.5 million at the height of her supposed success, now claims to have no money

I believe her claim was “billion” not “million.” Although I suppose the distinction is irrelevant at this stage.

> According to Holmes’ inmate information on the Bureau of Prisons’ website, the 39-year-old mother of two will be released on Dec. 29, 2032 — nine years, six months and 29 days after she checked into Federal Prison Camp Bryan on May 30.

> Holmes, now known as federal inmate 24965-111, was initially sentenced to 11 years and three months in the minimum-security, women-only Texas prison.

> A Bureau of Prison spokesperson would not comment on the specifics of Holmes’ earlier-than-expected release.

> “For privacy, safety and security reasons, our office does not comment on the conditions of confinement for any inmate, including release planning or release plans,” the rep told reporters on Monday.

thanks, keep us posted.

This is why you see a lot of 1 year and 1 day sentences. Any federal sentence 1 year or less must be served 100% in full. If it’s 1 year and 1 day it’s eligible for the time reduction credit and you can serve less than 1 year.

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